Process of and apparatus for supplying soap



A. TRAUBE. PROCESS OF AND APPARATUS FOR SUPPLYING SOAP.

APPLICATION FILED OCT. 181 1919.

Patented July 26, 1921.

materials containin UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

ABRAHiAMlDRAUBE, OF BROOKLYN, NEW YORK.

rnocnss or AND arramrosron surname soar.

Specification of Letters Patent. Patented J uly 26, 1921- Appllcation filed October 18, 1919. Serial No. 331,611.

To all whom it may concern. I

Be it known that I, ABRAHAM TRAUBE, a citizen of the United States of America, residing at Brooklyn, county of Kings, and State of New York, have invented new and useful Improvements in Processes of and Apparatus for Supplying Soap, of which the following is a specification. i

This invention relates to improvements in processes'ot and apparatus for supplying soaprto cleaning machines and the like, the principal object of the invention being to provide a process by means of which the constituents adapted to form the ingre ients of the soap are brought together during their passage to the place of use and chemically combined immediately before entering the machine Where the soap is to be used.

A further object oi. the invention is the provision of an apparatus provided with communicating compartments in which the raw materials are separately placed, and

-means for causing one of such' materials .to

pass in contact with, the other and carry along with it only the desired amount of the soap forming ingredient contained in the second material.

With the foregoing and other objects in view, the invention consists in the novel procedure and combination of parts which will be more fully described hereinafter and particularly pointed out in theclaims.

The process forming the main object of this invention consists in placin a material containing potash in the'path o a material which is incapable of freeing the potash but containing a constituent which will absorb a certain quantity of the potash, so that upon saturation of the first mentioned material with the second only so much potash will be absorbed by said constituent as is desired. to form a cleansing vcompound or soap;

As an example of the manner in which the process 1s1carried out, it is well known that caustic soda is not soluble in benzene except in so farasthe benzene contains fatty acid,

- which, upon contact of the benzene with the caustic soda, will combine with somuch of the potash contained in the soda as the fatty acid is capable of absorbing, thereby forming a soap, without carrying along any free potash.

for carrying out the herein describedvproc ess, said apparatus being adapted for use in connection with a cleaning machine such.

for instance as that shown and described in U. S. Letters Patent No. 1,291,266, grantand Fig. 2 is a sectiontaken on the line 2-2 ofFi 1.

Regen-ing to the drawing, 2 designates the tank of a cleaning machine such as that described in the patent referred to, in which tank is' usually mounted a rotatable reticulated drum (not shown) that carries the articles to be cleaned and permits the'detergent fluids within the tank to freely pass to the interior. of the drum and on to the articles carried therein. a Supported at one end of the tank2 is a receptacle 3, in communication through a valved port 4 with the tank, said port being located at some distance above the lower end of the receptacle. The receptacle 3 is interiorly separated by. means of a perforated partition 5 into an upper comartment 6 and a lower compartment 7. ommunieating with the upper compartment 6 is a pipe 8, preferablycentrally disposed in the top of the receptacle, and within the compartment and centrally disposed with relation to the end of said pipe is a perforatedsprayer device. 9 by means of which the material delivered by..the pipe is sprinkled or sprayed over the material contained'in the chamber 62,

The numeral 10 designates a reservoirv adapted tocontain a substance having as a constituent one of the soap formin ingredients, benzene having been found t e most practicable. This reservoir communicates, by means of a pipe 11 with the upper end' of a trap 12,- the latter in turn communicat. ing adjacent itsupper end with the pipe 8. The trap with a suitable drain cock-13, whereby the trap may be. drained from time to time. The lower end of the compartment 7 also formsla trap-andis'provided with a similar drain cock .14.

ed to me under date of January '14, 1919,

12r-iS provided at its lowerend,

In ractice the reservoir 10 is usually placed below ground, and for the purpose of removing therefrom any water that may have .settled at the bottom a pipe 15 is provided, which extends to the lowermost part of the cone-shaped bottom of the reservoir, and which pipe'may communicate with a suitable suction pump (not shown).

In carrying out the present invention with the apparatus above described, a substance, such as caustic soda, preferably in lump form, containing potash as one of the soapforming ingredlent's, is placed in the compartment 6, restingon the perforated partition 5, and a material, siich' as benzene, containing fatty acid as the other soap-forming ingredient, is placed in the reservoir 10. Any suitable means may be appliedto the apparatus to causethe material in the reservoir 'toflow through the pipes 11 and 8 and be thereby sprinkled or sprayed over the materialinthe compartment 6. In the machine of the prior patent referred to-a vacuum creating means is in communication with the tank, and in the apparatus herein illustrated the pipe 16 is intended ,to establish communication between the tank and a suitable means for creating a vacuum in the tank and thereby causing the flow of the material from the reservoir 10 in the manner above described. By this means only so much of the soap-forming ingredient or.

potash is carried along into the tank as can be absorbed by the fatty acid, in the benzene, so that no free potash, which would be injurious to the articles being cleaned, is introduced into the tank.

From the foregoing it will be seen that order to vary the amount of cleansing compound or soap to be carried into the tank It will be necessary merely to vary the fatty acid constituent of the benzene, which may be done in a variety of ways that will be obvious to those skilled in the art. The provision of the traps 12 and 7 .in the apparatus herein illustrated is to guard against water being carried along with the benzene into the tank, since it is well knownthat caustic soda is soluble in water and there fore free potash would be carried into the tank if water were permitted to be carried along by 'thebenzene. By-the provision of the traps,'however, the likelihood of water passing through the compartment -6 and thence into. the tank is eliminated, since, water being of greater specific gravity than benzene, any water that maybe present in the benzene when it leaves the reservoir will fatty acid in a non-aqueous solvent into confall the bottom of the traps and may be withdrawn from time to time by means of the cooks 13 and 14. While I have described herein a specific form of apparatus as an illustration of one manner of carrying out my process, it is to be understood that I do not limit my invention to this particular apparatus, since there are numerous ways in which one soapforming ingredient may be caused to pass in contact with another and in so doing chemically combine to form the desired cleaning compound.

Having thus described my invention, what I claim is:

1. The process of forming a soap solution which consists in conducting a solution of a soap forming acid in a non-aqueous solvent into contact with an alkali while substantially excluding water. I A

2. Theprocess of forming a soap solution which consists in maintaining a. solution of a soap forming ingredient in a non-aqueous solvent in a closed vessel, maintaining another soap forming ingredient in a second closed vessel, and conducting said solution into contact with said second ingredient while substantially excluding waten i'therefrom.

3. The process of forming a soap solution which consists in conducting a solution of fatty acid in a non-aqueous solvent into contact with amass of alkali in lump form while substantially excluding water therefrom. 4. The process of forming a soap solution which consists in conducting a solution of tact-with a mass of potash containing substance in lump form, while excluding water therefrom.

I 5. The process of forming a soap solution name to this specification.

ABRAHAM TRAUBE. 

